Founder’s Message – the Journey

Why Breakthroughs Often Begin Small

Many of history’s most important breakthroughs began with one determined individual or a very small team.

Charles Goodyear’s persistent experimentation led to the development of vulcanized rubber. Bill Gates and Paul Allen started Microsoft as a two-person partnership. Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak created the foundation of Apple as part of a tiny founding team. PayPal emerged from the ideas, competition, and eventual combination of two young startup companies.

These organizations later became corporate giants—but their defining breakthroughs occurred while they were still small, intensely focused, and willing to pursue ideas whose outcomes were uncertain.

Large companies can and do innovate. However, most established corporations are not structured to incubate highly uncertain discoveries over long periods. Their executives are responsible for producing earnings, managing risk, meeting performance targets, and protecting shareholder value. Executive compensation frequently reinforces those priorities.

That does not make large companies unimportant to innovation. Their capital, manufacturing capabilities, distribution networks, technical resources, and access to global markets are often essential for bringing a validated breakthrough to scale. But the original discovery—the eureka moment—frequently begins elsewhere.

The Polymer Bonding Process™ followed that pattern.

The Eureka Moment

The eureka moment for the Polymer Bonding Process—“the Process”—occurred in a laboratory in November 2016.

By then, I had spent fifteen years in the adhesive industry. I immediately understood the potential significance of being able to bond polymers reliably. Polymers had long been among the most difficult materials to bond, and certain polymers were widely considered nearly impossible to bond successfully.

But one successful laboratory result did not establish a technology.

The discovery would have value only if the reaction could be repeated—and repeated consistently.

In January 2017, we were presented with another challenge: find a way to seal leaking fuel tanks—plastic or metal, large or small. That challenge became the beginning of what is now the Tech-Patch Repair System, or TPRS™.

Testing, Testing, and More Testing

I spent much of the first two years testing, retesting, changing conditions, and challenging the Process. This was the beginning of a validation journey that continues today.

Those early tests demonstrated that precision was essential. We learned:

• Catalyst and controlled heat were normally required to produce the best and most consistent results. Certain materials could be bonded without heating the substrate, and, in much rarer circumstances, a polymer could be bonded without the catalyst. Those exceptions did not eliminate the need for a disciplined, repeatable process.
• The usable operating-temperature range observed during testing was approximately 30 percent greater than we had initially expected.
• Properly prepared bonds demonstrated exceptional durability.
• Surface preparation, material selection, application technique, temperature, pressure, joint design, and curing conditions all contributed to the final result.

These discoveries gave real meaning to one of our earliest taglines:

Precision ∙ Performance ∙ Permanence

A Successful Bond Is Only Part of the Solution

We also learned that many people do not distinguish between adhesive performance and structural engineering.

One customer purchased a Poly Kit™ to repair a broken support leg on a refrigerator shelf. Refrigerator components are commonly manufactured from polymers, and the initial repair was successful. Two weeks later, however, the leg broke again. The customer naturally concluded that the repair had failed.

In our assessment, the underlying problem was not simply the bond. The original shelf support was inadequately designed for the load being placed upon it. After the repair, the owner continued loading the shelf beyond what the original geometry could support. Recreating the original dimensions recreated the original weakness.

The laws of chemistry govern the formation of the bond. The laws of physics govern how forces are distributed through the repaired structure. A chemically successful bond cannot compensate indefinitely for an undersized component, insufficient surface area, excessive leverage, or continued overloading.

To create a stronger repair, we needed to increase the bonded surface area, reinforce the joint, and improve the way the load moved through the repaired section.

For small, noncritical consumer repairs, we found that porous athletic tape could provide a simple reinforcing scaffold. Once incorporated into the repair, it increased the effective bonding area and allowed the damaged section to be made thicker and stronger. Critical structural repairs, however, require properly specified reinforcement and an engineered repair design.

This experience taught us an important lesson:

Bonding materials and engineering a durable solution are related—but they are not the same thing.

Developing the Tech-Patch Repair System

The fuel-tank challenge required more than an adhesive. It required a complete repair system.

We evaluated five different approaches, beginning with a conventional fiberglass-and-epoxy combination. Several polymers were described as impervious to gasoline, but testing showed that some were merely resistant. Given sufficient exposure, fuel could still penetrate or degrade them.

We eventually selected PTFE-coated E-glass fabric. Its combination of chemical resistance, reinforcement, conformability, and durability made it close to ideal for the application. However, one remaining vulnerability had to be addressed.

In our experience, certain premium-fuel formulations could attack exposed areas of our cyanoacrylate-based Bonding Agents. We had not observed the same problem with the regular gasoline formulations evaluated, but the premium-fuel results demonstrated that the adhesive interface needed additional protection.

That led to the development of our patch-on-a-patch technique.

Using the Polymer Bonding Process, two layers of PTFE-coated E-glass fabric are bonded together. The Bonding Agent is contained within the protected interface between the two layers, while the PTFE-coated surfaces provide the fuel-resistant barrier. The result is not simply an adhesive repair—it is an engineered, multilayer system in which each material performs a specific function.

What the Polymer Tests Revealed

As testing expanded, we observed an important and remarkably consistent pattern across a wide variety of polymers.

The bonded interface did not behave like a conventional layer of glue placed between two unrelated surfaces. Instead, the interface appeared to behave increasingly like part of the bonded material system. Its mechanical response was influenced by the properties of the polymer to which it was bonded.

This characteristic became one of the foundations of Intelligent Interface Engineering™.

It would be scientifically premature to claim that a Bonding Agent literally acquires every chemical, mechanical, and physical property of the substrate. What our results demonstrate is that the Polymer Bonding Process can create an interface whose performance is closely integrated with the behavior of the bonded materials.

Understanding exactly how and why that occurs is one of the major subjects requiring further research.

External Validation

Over the years, companies and universities in several countries evaluated the Polymer Bonding Process. Within the results reported to us, we received no notification of a Process failure when the specified procedures were followed.

Adhesive companies—including major participants in the industry—also evaluated the Process without reporting a failure to us. At least one major adhesive company had staff members who began referring customers to Tech-Bond when those customers needed a way to bond difficult polymers.

The polymer industry itself also provided important evidence.

One company tested Tech-Bond on thermoplastic polyurethane, or TPU. Some TPU formulations can elongate up to about seven hundred percent. During this company’s testing, Tech-Bond’s bonded samples reached slightly more than 200 percent elongation.

The company classified the result as a failure because the bonded sample did not reach the maximum elongation associated with the unbonded TPU material.

We saw something very different.

Conventional cured cyanoacrylates have limited elongation and are generally considered relatively rigid. The fact that a cyanoacrylate-based bonded assembly remained intact through more than 200 percent elongation was not evidence that nothing had happened. It was important evidence that the bonded interface was responding in an unusual way to the mechanical behavior of the polymer.

The test did not prove that the interface had acquired every property of the TPU. It did, however, provide another significant indication that the Polymer Bonding Process was producing something fundamentally different from a conventional adhesive joint.

From Polymer Bonding to Intelligent Interface Engineering™

One final development helped bring the larger concept into focus, identifying a new universe of solutions.

We worked with several companies to bond PTFE to steel. The PTFE-to-steel bond could be created successfully, but the resulting interface had limited ability to absorb shock and compression.

The answer was not necessarily to search for a stronger adhesive. The answer was to engineer a better interface.

We introduced FVMQ—a fluorosilicone elastomer—between the PTFE and the steel. The PTFE was bonded to the FVMQ, and the FVMQ was bonded to the steel. The elastomeric intermediate layer helped accommodate differences in movement and mechanical behavior while absorbing shock and compression.

The new architecture substantially improved the performance of the assembly.

That is Intelligent Interface Engineering™: selecting and arranging materials so that the interface does more than hold two surfaces together. The interface becomes an engineered component of the complete system.

What Ten Years Have Taught Us

Nearly ten years of development and testing have established a strong body of evidence:

• We know that the Polymer Bonding Process works within its tested and documented operating scope.
• We know that Molecular Integration™ has produced repeatable results on the materials and applications evaluated.
• We know that Intelligent Interface Engineering can solve problems that cannot be solved by simply selecting a stronger adhesive.
• We know that polymers and elastomers—materials traditionally considered bonding problems—can become essential parts of the engineered solution.

We have also learned how much remains to be discovered.

Important details concerning reaction mechanisms, material combinations, interface behavior, long-term environmental exposure, load transfer, and application-specific performance still require investigation. Those details are necessary if industry is to realize the full potential of bonding polymers and engineering advanced material interfaces.

This is where small innovators, universities, manufacturers, major corporations, engineers, technicians, and customers can work together.

A small company may discover the breakthrough. Universities can help explain and independently validate it. Large companies can provide applications, resources, manufacturing capabilities, and access to global markets. Each has an important role—but the process frequently begins with one person or one small team asking a question that others have not yet asked.

If you have a difficult bonding problem, a question about our technologies, or test results that reveal something new, we invite you to contact us.

The next important discovery may begin with your question.